Video Nation: Israelis are consuming more video than ever, but infrastructure is slow compared to OECD

Israelis like to surf YouTube, watch Netflix, listen to music on Spotify, and talk on WhatsApp, but they do so on a wired internet infrastructure that is outdated and slow compared to the average of OECD countries, according to the Internet Index of the Israel Internet Association. The index. which was published on Sunday for the first time, summarizes usage habits and the quality of internet infrastructure in Israel.

"You can clearly see the rapid growth that has taken place over the past year in the consumption of various video content among Israelis - whether it is in the use of TikTok or in the consumption of series on Netflix," said the CEO of the Internet Association, Yoram Hacohen. “The survey also shows that the ever-increasing dependence on the internet requires us to 'catch up' at a faster pace in everything that concerns infrastructure - fiber optics and the speed of surfing the web. The use of the internet is increasing at a rapid rate and the state must make sure that the infrastructures meet the demand and are prepared for future developments."

The first part of the index deals with the internet infrastructure in Israel. According to the associations's data, at the beginning of the year only 35% of households in Israel were connected to fiber optics - slightly lower than the OECD average of 36% and significantly lower than countries such as Norway (68%), Spain (81%) or South Korea (87%). The average download speed in Israel is 100.65 MB per second on home internet as of December 2022 - an increase of 10.1% compared to March 2022.

In cellular Internet, Israel is in seventh place on the list of countries with the largest number of subscribers in relation to the size of the population, with 139.9 cellular subscribers per 100 inhabitants (Japan, which is in first place, has 190.5 subscribers per 100 inhabitants). These subscribers have, by and large, almost full access to fourth generation cellular networks, with all 4 major providers - Pelephone, Cellcom, Partner and Hot - reaching a national coverage of at least 97% with a download speed of between 21 and 22 MB per second (except for Pelephone which provides download speed of 27.2 MB). The index did not provide data on the scope of the national coverage of fifth generation.

The Internet provider market is currently dominated by four large players who are responsible for 83% of all traffic in Israel: the Bezeq group, which includes Pelephone and Bezeq International, is the largest provider with 27.39% of the traffic, followed by Partner (23.07%), Cellcom (18.66%) and Hotnet ( 13.45%).

In terms of usage habits, during 2022 browsing was equally divided between mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, and stationary devices. On mobile, the most popular browser is Google's Chrome with 29.82% of the traffic volume, followed by Apple's Safari (10.26%), Samsung's browser (3.59%) and Facebook (3.4%) \[when you click a link in Facebook's mobile app, it opens in an internal browser\]. On computers, the dominance of Chrome is even more pronounced with 40.76% of the surfing scope, followed by Safari (4.23%), Microsoft's Edge (3.41%) and Firefox (3.16%).

The most popular Israeli site according to the index, which is based on Similarweb data, was Ynet, followed by Walla, Mako, Haaretz and One. The list of foreign websites is led by Google, Google's YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, WhatsApp and Twitter.

In terms of the services used by Israeli surfers, in a survey conducted by the Internet Association for the purpose of compiling the index, 97% said they use YouTube, 95% WhatsApp, 90% Facebook, 70% Instagram and Facebook Messenger, 54% Telegram, 49% Tiktok, 35% Twitter and 30% LinkedIn.

In regards to the penetration of streaming services, 60% stated that they subscribe to Netflix, 10% subscribe to Disney+, 7% subscribe to a paid channel on YouTube, 5% to Apple TV+, and 3% to Amazon Prime. 30% said they don't subscribe to any streaming service. In multi-channel television, Hot is the leader, with 22% saying they subscribe to one of its services, followed by Yes with 18%, and Cellcom and Partner with 11% each. 6% subscribe to more than one provider and 23% do not have any multi-channel provider. In streaming music, Spotify leads the way with 28%, followed by Apple Music with 8%. 43% do not subscribe to any music streaming provider.